Mindtree’s global SAP practice works together with British American Tobacco to win Gold Quality Award for the delivery of one of the largest global roll-outs of workforce planning in SAP Business Planning & Consolidation.

9th November 2017, Bluefin, Mindtree’s global SAP practice, announced today that it has helped deploy one of the world’s largest workforce planning and employment cost forecasting solutions for British American Tobacco, which took Gold in the UK’s SAP Quality Awards yesterday evening. This deployment has not only provided British American Tobacco with cost efficiencies, but has also delivered significant reductions in consolidation time, from 6 weeks to a few minutes, along with more accurate insight to drive further improvements when it comes to the crucial matter of workforce planning.

British American Tobacco is one of the world’s leading multinational companies with brands sold in over 200 markets and employs around 55,000 people worldwide. There is a focus on continuous innovation across the business, so when British American Tobacco’s global SAP HR solution, SuccessFactors, was being rolled out and it was discovered that 250 spreadsheets were being manually updated and consolidated every quarter, something had to change. Whilst SuccessFactors was providing a real-time, self-service solution to staff, the existing headcount and employment cost forecasting spreadsheets were not integrated with any system.

Bluefin recommended that British American Tobacco added a new HR environment within its existing SAP Business Planning and Consolidation solution. With an agile approach to ensure a high-quality deployment, the team rapidly deployed a proof of concept within 3 weeks and realised the fully scoped project in less than 5 months. Such was the speed and quality of the deployment the project was awarded Gold in SAP’s UK quality awards for fast delivery.

“We are delighted to receive this award - it is acknowledgement of the talent and tenacity of both the teams at British American Tobacco and Bluefin” said Damian De Conno, Global Analytics Lead for HR & People, British American Tobacco. “To make projects like this a success there are some key elements, aside from the architecture and technical knowledge, that can often get overlooked. Bluefin’s depth of experience within the SAP Business Planning & Consolidation area is unquestionable, however they also understand the ‘commercial’ and ‘people’ factor of deployments”. Damian went on to explain “They work as one team, seamlessly collaborating with the business and IT, focusing on a single goal. The outcome speaks for itself”.

“Delivering quality at speed is vital: it allows businesses to realise benefits quicker” explained Arun Rangaraju, Global Head of SAP Mindtree. “To receive recognition in this area is fantastic and clearly illustrates our commitment to customers”.

British American Tobacco and Bluefin will be at SAP TechEd Barcelona, held 14th – 16th November 2017, showcasing the solution, and hosting a networking session.